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“ECHOES” – Orchestra of the Swan
‘Echoes’ is the latest in Orchestra of the Swan’s ‘mixtape’ series, following on from ‘Timelapse’ and ‘Labyrinths’ (which has received over 8 million audio streams since 2021 and was shortlisted for Gramophone award in the Spatial Audio category). As with
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BAGATELLES
Piano Music by Bernard Hughes
This album presents the complete works of Bernard Hughes for solo piano, an eclectic collection covering a period of over 30 years. The oldest piece dates back to his teenage years and the most recent is a brand new suite,
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Haochen Zhang Navigates Rachmaninoff’s Depths, but Long Yu Disappoints
Gold Medallist of the Van Cliburn Competition in 2009, Chinese pianist Haochen Zhang embarked on a tour de force in Hong Kong with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, accompanied by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra under the
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A Bad Night in Los Angeles
Piano Music by Robert Matthew-Walker
The title alone invites further exploration of this interesting, varied disc of piano music by Robert Matthew-Walker, a British composer and an influential part of the classical music recording industry for more than half a century (he ran marketing and
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Big Pieces for Small Hands
A New Collection for Young Pianists by Béla Hartmann
As I have written before on this site, pianists with small hands often struggle with more virtuosic repertoire because of the physical demands it puts on the hands, mostly big, awkward stretches for which a larger hand span and greater
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A Tale of Two Pianists
Lifschitz & Volodin Perform Rachmaninoff’s Complete Preludes
Rachmaninoff’s Preludes have been a cornerstone of the piano repertoire, showcasing the composer’s wealth of emotions, propensity for lyricism and technical virtuosity. As part of HKU MUSE’s Russian Piano Classics series, Russian pianists Konstantin Lifschitz and Alexei Volodin took turns
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Garrick Ohlsson Schubert Piano Sonatas D537 & D959
Ten years separate the composition of these two piano sonatas by Franz Schubert. The earlier one, in A minor, was completed in 1817 when Schubert was just twenty but had already written some 250 lieder. Having left several incomplete piano
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Música callada – Federico Mompou
Stephen Hough, piano
‘the music of evaporation’ Federico Mompou‘s piano work Musica Callada is a set of twenty-eight short pieces that were written between 1959 and 1967. It was the last piece of piano music published in the composer’s lifetime The title, borrowed
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